High tech entrepreneurial firms in a university-based business incubator: Spaces of knowledge, resource heterogeneity and capital formation

This paper considers the underlying processes and contexts of incubation as critical factors in accelerated firm growth in a university-based technology incubator. At the heart of the study is a concern to understand these dynamics in the early stages of incubation, including processes of firm network formation, the capacity to access and use combinations of resources at various phases of incubation, and the ways in which the incubator, as a techno-social space, supports the connection of different resources and their relationships. Building on theoretical frameworks that draw on the conceptual work of Lachmann and Bourdieu, the authors argue that it is possible to identify 'heterogeneous resources' as different forms of 'capital' at work in the incubation process. The empirical case study at a university-based technology incubator illustrates the ways in which university incubators help high-tech start-up firms to build these capabilities through network formation and a variety of types of resource mobilization.